Oreo Cookies are ‘Dunking’ into Social Media Marketing

When I was doing my research on companies who use social media marketing really well, one corporate brand in particular kept popping up in the ‘top ten’ – Oreo cookies. I was intrigued and dug a little deeper. To my surprise, here’s a staple product that has been around for generations, including my own childhood, yet the brand remains relevant and exciting due to creative marketing on social media.

When the stadium lights went out during Super Bowl XLVII in 2013, Oreo took to social media immediately with a witty yet very timely tweet, referring to none other than their infamous Oreo cookie of course…

The post went viral and it was re-tweeted more than 16,000 times and received more than 20,000 ‘likes’ to their Facebook page. This is a great example of how a company was able to use a real-time situation to market their product through social media. It was all about timing – having the right people together at the right time to take advantage of a massive Super Bowl audience without paying a single dime on traditional marketing. It just worked… and it worked really well!!

Beyond the Super Bowl tweet, Oreo is no stranger to social media. In fact, they use various social media platforms to re-ignite the hype around the brand. The sharing of content and images along with the conversations is impressive, considering, Oreo cookies haven’t changed that much over the years.

Another great example is Oreo’s Daily Twist campaign. The iconic brand turned 100 years old in 2013. For 100 days, corporate creative forces worked together to develop and market new ‘topical’ content and images about the brand based on the news of each day.

To generate buzz and awareness, they launched their 100 day campaign using traditional marketing – paid advertising, and, used their digital channels as well to amplify the content.

“Consumption of media has shifted quite a bit to digital, social and mobile. To be on pace with that is really important for the brand to continue to grow; that ‘s why the Daily Twist program was born.”